1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to an electronic percussion instrument. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to an electronic percussion instrument having a pad section and a rim section provided on the periphery of the pad section.
2. Description of Related Art
Among a variety of electronic percussion instruments, there is a type of electronic percussion instrument that is essentially composed of only a pad for detecting a beating force applied to the pad. Another type has a pad and a rim section provided on the periphery of the pad for detecting the presence or the absence of a beat force applied to the pad. Japanese Laid-open Patent Application HEI 6-175651 describes such an electronic percussion instrument that has a pad and a rim section.
The electronic percussion instrument with the pad and the rim section is capable of performing an ordinary percussion performance when the pad is beaten, and a rim-shot performance when only the rim is beaten. The rim-shot performance generates a tone in a harder tone color than the one generated by the ordinary percussion performance.
In the above-described electronic percussion instrument, the tone color of a tone to be generated is set by an independent tone color setting switch. Once a tone is set for the performance of the electronic percussion instrument, the same pre-set tone is generated throughout the performance until the tone is changed by the tone color setting switch. Therefore, when a performer wants to change the tone color, he may have to stop the performance and operate the tone color setting switch to change the tone color. As a result, the flow of the performance is interrupted, which is undesirable.